How about jail time for vessel skippers and any other responsible people on board. Fines are not adequate. There needs to be criminal consequences for those directly responsible for the lawbreaking, and anyone up the chain of command that has directed them to break the law.

@ 12:28 There are two full time observers on all factory trawlers fishing for pollock in the Bering Sea. Get your facts straight before blogging from your treehouse in Sitka. Maybe NMFS is to blame for their inadequate sampling methods and the fact that pollock observers rarely see the back deck of a trawler. Corruption runs all the way to the top in this fishery.

2.7 million ? How about penalty that fits the crime. How about a fine equal to the dollars value of the under reported catch, far more than 2.7 million, and some real jail time the corporate chiefs that really drive the bus.

It won't end until the cheaters are hit where it hurts the most - profits turned over to the federal government to restore the damage done to a slopplily managed fishery because the pollock fishery is also responsible for killing off the king salmon fishery of the Western Alaska region. The CDQ program was a farce to begin with - giving away money that really isn't being given away in the first place. It just bought new partners into the game.

Maybe try actually enforcing the law, throwing people in jail who steal the fish, throw people in jail for submitting false documents to the federal government, and see if that works. Its all a crime, American Seafoods profited from it massively, and they only get a fine- thats a fraction of the fish they stole? Thats not a deterrent, its encouragement.